


Blood as Black as Night

by LysSerris



Series: One-Shot [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Voldemort Wins, Bellamione Cult Discord Game, Bellamione Cult Ilvermorny Cup, Blood Magic, Discord: Bellamione Cult, F/F, Grey!Hermione, One Shot, Soul Bond, runic magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 21:33:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19980841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LysSerris/pseuds/LysSerris
Summary: “A dungeon isn’t appropriate for someone of Black blood, however new it may be.”Hermione gaped at her, mind refusing to compute what the witch had said.“What.”





	Blood as Black as Night

**Author's Note:**

> Minimally edited, will continue, but this is a one shot for now until I have the time.

_ SLAP! _

The tongue that had been hanging languidly from her mouth was nearly bitten in half when the witch before her landed a solid strike. The air rang out with the echo of the action and blood began to pool in the back of her throat. She just barely managed to refrain from screaming out in pain. The witch in front of her reared back again with a determined look in her eye that spoke to her desire to wring a sound from her captive’s throat.

\---

She’d been captured in the most ridiculous manner possible. Instead of a well-timed assault or the words of a traitor, she’d been done in by simple bad luck.

Pure, simple, stupid luck.

She had left their meager hideout to accrue fresh food for their constantly starving bellies after they’d finished out all the canned goods they’d previously scavenged out of an abandoned Muggle home. It was like that all around the countryside. Abandoned. Desolate. Empty homes and villages paired with even quieter streets and corners. The Muggles were slowly abandoning their homes without any direct commotion or realization as to the reasons why. Those that chose to stay often faced removal in a body bag. The cops all scratched their heads, the politicians simply glossed it over, and the rest simply never spoke of it. Their genocide had begun from the outside in.

She’d prepped the night before and set out early enough in the morning that the sun had yet to rise above the treetops. At her side had been a nylon bag filled with all the immediate essentials, as her own enchanted bag had been lost some weeks prior. Nearly nine months prior the Final Battle had gone awry. One single disarming spell was all it took to end Harry’s use as the Prophecy-Who-Walked. One spell, and their world came crashing down. The magic inside his forehead had long fled for darker pastures along with their hopes and dreams.

Her time had been eaten away by three fruitless searches before she managed to find fresh vegetables, a copious amount of bagged legumes, and a bottle of wine hidden behind an ineffectual lock. To her empty stomach it was a feast of enormous proportions. She began to wind her way back towards their camp, swollen on her prize and desperately wishing she could dig in. Safety was far from her mind.

And of course it managed to bite her in the ass.

She should have assumed that any fresh food lying around would mean the village hadn’t been abandoned all that long. She should have assumed that the Snatchers would remain in the area to catch up any stragglers or those stupid enough to return. All the things she should have, or could have, done. But she couldn’t have prepared to walk into something worse.

One minute she was crouched between two homes on the outskirts of the village as she prepared to dash back to the cover of the woods, and the next she was bound and gagged, falling face first into the bushes at her side. A spell jerked her up and to her knees while the bag around her back was ripped away, tossed to the ground and stomped on. She had one moment to scream out for help.

And then the pain began.

Bellatrix Lestrange, now Black after her loving husband found himself on the wrong side of Kingsley’s wand, was a true Mistress of the Dark. Pain was her pleasure. In the aftermath of her Lord’s victory she’d taken immediately to the hunt for war criminals and revolutionaries. Post-War Britain was her private playground. Hermione had only had the bad luck to face her post Hogwarts once before. 

She’d been down a darkened alleyway late at night, no one else around, and she’d suffered terribly before anyone was able to find her. Her memento of that night was a new scar on her right forearm in mimicry to the one on her left. Emblazoned in Bellatrix’s childish scrawl was the word ‘Mine’, gashed into her skin with a shaky hand. Neville nearly lost his life that night when he sprinted through the streets to come to her rescue. But they’d escaped. 

There was no escape now.

It had only been her, Harry, and whatever remained of the Order, all so far underground that the disparate groups hadn’t spoken with one another in weeks. Better for them to hide during the worst of the reprisals, better to wait and recover before trying to regroup and fight back. That had been the plan, approved and agreed upon at the beginning, but it still didn’t make it any easier to dismiss the braying thoughts that told them they were all that was left. It did nothing to warm the loneliest parts of night when haunted memories came alive.

_ SLAP! _

\---

The next blow was managed to split her lip when a sharp clawed finger swiped along the soft tissue and opened her up to the air.

“Anything?” The silken voice of her torturer’s keeper floated out across the expanse of the room Hermione was kneeled in, a soothing balm to her ears after hours of Alecto Carrow’s harsh questions.

“Nothing, she’s still clammed up,” Alecto turned away from her to view the beast at the door. Hermione barely managed to bite back what would have been a grin. It certainly wouldn’t do her any favors to tempt her torturers. She surmised that she must have made a slight grin though, as Bellatrix suddenly stepped forward to where she kneeled.

“We’ll be wrapping up then. Narcissa’s found a delightfully more appropriate manner of getting through her.”

“How’s that?” Alecto moved away, backing herself towards the open door. Hermione leaned backwards in her bonds, body pressed away by the manic aura surrounding the dark witch before her.

“A ritual. Should work out right as rain, then she’s open. We’ll get what we want,” she crouched low before Hermione and grabbed her chin roughly between sharp fingers, “And she’ll get what she wants too.”

\---

Three days had passed since Hermione’s rather disconcerting liberation from Alecto Carrow. In the entire seventy-two hours that had passed, she’d never once been accosted. Her only comfort, and consequent source of anxiety, was that they had never managed to break through her Occlumency defenses. Her skills had been new and untested until her capture, and Hermione could only hope they would hold up in the coming days.

A sharp clang ran through her prison cell, a disused spot in the dungeons of Malfoy Manor, alerting her to an arrival. Her cell dor was peaked open slowly while a wand poked through the gap and trained itself on her shivering form. A head poked through next, Alecto, an eerie smile on her face. She lifted Hermione from her spot against the corner before clamping her hands together with manacles and pushing her out the door.

Through twisting halls and open doors Hermione passed through room to room until finally reaching a location that she guessed to be near the back of the massive home. The room was massive, a wide row of windows filling it with the evening light, revealing the pale color of the walls and empty space devoid of furniture. All along the far wall lay painting after painting, each covered with black cloth to obscure the occupants within.

In the center of the floor was a massive runic circle etched out in something crushed and glittering in the dim light. The symbols were all geometric, reminding her of runes studied in school, but so hyper specialized or old that they were neither recognizable nor familiar in whole. In the center of the space the ground sloped down to a point and had been filled with clear water, petals of purple flowers set adrift over the space. Fear lanced up Hermione’s spine as she eyed the setup whole, the slow drip feed of terror she’d experienced since arriving had begun wake and roar.

Her feet, bare, tried to grasp onto the ground and keep her in place while the hard hand of Alecto pushed in a fist against her back. Slowly, ever so slowly, she was moved forward into the space, bodily lifted up and over the glittering line of runes along the edge. At her side and pushed against the wall was Lucius Malfoy with a sneer across his face and his blonde wife holding onto his arm.

“Who will lead her?” A voice called from her right, bold and baritone to the point of ringing in her ears. She spun as much as she could to catch sight of a thin man in silver robes, a tome between his hands and thick spectacles covering his eyes. 

“I will,” Lucius stepped forward from his perch against the wall as Narcissa released his arm, the ghost of a smile passing across her face. With practiced steps and impassive face he came before Alecto and switched positions with the woman, his warm and harsh grip coming to rest across her elbow while a wand flick dissolved her manacles. Immediately she moved to escape his grasp, only to find herself rooted to the spot and arms rigidly falling to her sides.

_ ‘Fuck.’ _

“And who will lead you?” The Silver Man spoke again, Hermione twisting further in Lucius’s grip to see who he was speaking to.

There up against the doorway Hermione had walked in from was Bellatrix Black, gussied up in the finery of silver and gold upon her wrists and fingers. Her body was shrouded with a black dress that dropped from her shoulders to her ankles, material thin and wispy to the point of revealing her body beneath it. Hermione felt a flush rise to her face at the sight of the woman’s chest, pale skin passing through the blackness surrounding her. Her hair was drawn back and pinned in place with her wand, the end sticking up at an angle, while loose curls framed her face and bounced as she began to speak.

“As Head, I will lead myself.”

The sight of Bellatrix standing there and speaking calmly as she leaned back against the cream colored wall was enough to break Hermione from her self-imposed stupor. She attempted to call out, speak her mind, question anything and everything, but she found herself unable to do so. Her voice was gone. A spell allowed her to move her mouth and exhale breath as if she was speaking but with every syllable she attempted to utter she remained silent and unheard. 

Bellatrix smiled hungrily when she noticed Hermione’s distress, something cruel and wicked that felt far more intimate than Hermione cared for.

“Approach.”

The Silver Man stepped forward in time with Bellatrix as they approached the ritual space. Their feet stepped high as they avoided the powdery lines of the ritual space, moving slowly as to not disturb it. Lucius pushed her forward slightly until her feet were buried beneath the warm water in the center, petals bumping against her ankles as Bellatrix joined her in the space. When both witches were centered Lucius stepped back before leaving the room entirely, the door shutting loudly as he made his exit.

The Silver Man began speaking in a language full of long consonants and heavy intonation, Hermione confused and bewildered as she struggled to understand it. Bellatrix pierced Hermione with her eyes and widened her grin as the harsh words continued at their side, sharp teeth biting down on her bottom lip as the seconds stretched to minutes. Hermione felt a static like shock fall across her form, pulsing up through her feet and freezing every cell of her body in place, leaving her free to only blink and breathe. The Silver Man, still talking all the while, grabbed a hold of her left hand and brought it level with her chest.

With surprising swiftness he pulled a knife from beneath his robes and sliced the length of her palm from wrist to fingers, Hermione screaming soundlessly all the while. Her hand  _ burned. _ It pressed into her muscle and bone beneath it all with the piercing heat of a fire, roiling and churning as some darkened magic did it’s work. Thin tendrils of smoke wafted out the opened wound while the Silver Man released her hand to take up Bellatrix’s. With the same practiced motion he cut across her palm, dropping her hand and hiding the knife back in his robes before chanting even further.

A low thrum had begun to wind its way between the spaces of cleared air, pressure waves exuding and flowing upwards from the puddle at their feet. It pulsed, in and out, a tempo quickening with every passing second until it shook the very breath held in their chest. Hermione felt herself become lightheaded as her body pulsed and burned along with the working magic. With a final word as loud as a shout the Silver Man completed his chant and gripped hold of their hands, shoving them against one another palm to palm, cut to cut. A sizzling sound like steaming flesh began to fill the room as he stepped away and dropped his arms, Hermione now powerless to remove herself from the grip she had on Bellatrix.

And then it was all over. She was suddenly lying on the ground with half her body soaked through from the puddle beneath her. Her head began to pound with a headache as her vision shifted back and forth, her body fighting to keep bile in her stomach.

Bellatrix had a grin like the cat that got the canary, her eyes soft and warm as she stared down at Hermione’s now shivering form. When her visual inspection was finished she knelt down by her side and took a hold of Hermione’s sliced hand and brought it towards her own face. A second, two maybe, passed by before she showed the flat palm to the owner on the ground.

It was healed.

Where the knife had been run across her skin was now a silver and gray scar that ran from the heel of her palm to just below her middle finger. Hermione’s eyes widened in disbelief, worry and fear licking at the back of her mind.

“Where is Potter hiding,” Bellatrix husked against her ear.

“He’ll have left to regroup when I didn’t return,” her mouth began before she could even realize it, “Savernake Forest, Whiltshire.” Her voice caught in her throat when she finished spilling that secret, her mind reeling at the sudden admission.

“W-what, how-”

“Shh,” Bellatrix shushed her with a finger pressed against her lips, “All in good time, Pet.” She stood from her crouch and motioned towards her sister, Narcissa quickly coming forward to the center of the room. “Cissy, be a dear and clean her up, would you? I’ll go inform the Dark Lord, I expect I’ll be back in time for dinner. And Pet,” she leaned down again to pierce Hermione with her darkened eyes, “Do not try to escape, nor harm anyone inside the Manor. Understood?”

“Yes,” Hermione’s voice once again betrayed her as she acquiesced against her wishes.

“Good.” Bellatrix left her with a devilish smile, a chill much like a Dementor’s touch running along the young witch’s spine.

\---

Narcissa led her up and out of the room and into the blissfully empty hallway.

As they wandered Hermione remained locked inside her head, her thoughts swirling and head pounding. They hadn’t put her back in manacles when she’d been led out, there was no wand pointed at her back. Now was the perfect time for her to attempt an escape, she could overpo-

“Ah!” Hermione fell down to her knees mid stride, her head bursting with a blinding pain while the scars on her palm and arms began to burn. Narcissa merely turned around at the noise she had made, looking down at her with some mixture of contempt and pity. 

Eventually the pain throughout her body fled enough that she could shakily climb her way back to her feet. When she regained her footing Narcissa came to her side and gently gripped her right palm, giving her a soft squeeze before setting out again with Hermione towed along in her grip. She remained silent as the followed the Malfoy Matriarch, tugged and eventually led to a bedroom on the same floor.

“...Why am I not returning to the dungeons?” Her voice was hoarse and small within her chest, eyes deferential as she stared towards the ground. The question seemed to startle Narcissa from her self-imposed silence as she opened her eyes slightly, her lips parting.

“A dungeon isn’t appropriate for someone of Black blood, however new it may be.”

Hermione gaped at her, mind refusing to compute what Narcissa had said.

“What.”

**Author's Note:**

> Like Bellamione? https://discord.gg/pcfMU4F come on in and join the server!


End file.
